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JMicro controller found in 965P/P35(and maybe future X38) causes a lot problems with IDE optical drives, is there anyway to fix it?

Intel moves a big step since the release of 965P chipset, the new ICH8(R) southbridge, partnered with the it, is the first chipset to completely drop support of EIDE devices. While one could argue that the removal of PATA support is a needed step forward in technology, we firmly believe that Intel should have waited until the next generation ICH for this change. The Optical Drive market is still about 80% PATA based. While this development might spur the optical drive suppliers into offering additional SATA drives in the near future, it does not address the requirements of the current PATA installed base. Most motherboards using ICH8/ICH9 also add an additional chipset for PATA support, and the JMB361/JMB363 from JMicro are the most popular among them.

JMB361(or 363) is a single chip, one-lane PCI Express to two-port Serial ATA II and one-port PATA Host Controller, and can provide two-port SATA II and one-port PATA connectivity. Despite the nice feature sets on paper(PCI-E interface, SATAII w/ Raid support), the IDE parts of it, causing a lot of problems, more than it might worth.

We’ve got numerous reports from users, especially when coupled with IDE optical drive. These include can’t install system at all; randomly lockup when accessing drive; burners work in PIO mode and get very low burn speed with high cpu usage, or even worse, simply toast any disc. And the popular solution is: “Get another IDE controller card or use SATA drive instead, JMicro sucks.”

Yes, JMicro sucks, but is there any cost effective way to solve the problem without additional investment? In fact, these issues can be solved with proper BIOS setting and Windows driver.

1. Setup the bios properly. If you don’t use any IDE drive at all, just disable the JMicro controller in BIOS and hook the SATA drives to ports provided by Intel ICH. This will increase bootup speed as well as eliminate all potential problems since Intel chipset/driver provides great performance, stability and reliability. Otherwise, if you still have IDE drive around, set it as below:

                   (bios setting found in an ASUS MB)

The tricky part is, set it to AHCI or RAID mode even if you are about to use the IDE port only. Never, never set it to IDE mode. In IDE mode, all 3 ports(2 SATA+1 PATA) would act as a single SCSI device in system, and IDE optical drive works like a SCSI one, which is the cause of all the JMicro IDE plague. While in RAID/AHCI mode, the controller will “split” into two devices, a two-port SATA controller and a standard PCI IDE controller.

2. Then you should have no problem in system installation. After that, launch device manger by typing “devmgmt.msc”(without quotes) in Run Dialog and verify:

Make sure there is a Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller with Microsoft driver in the system. Everything would work since then.

3. If you have the JMicro IDE driver installed, remove it and revert back to the Microsoft one:

    1. The Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller in above screenshot would become “JMB36X Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller“(or any other name starts with JMicro/JMB), double click it, navigate to “Driver” table, then click “Update Driver…”

    2. When Hardware Update Wizard appears, select “No, not this time” to install the driver locally. Click Next, then select “install from a list or specific location(Advanced), go to next step.

    3. Click “Don’t search, I will choose the driver to install“, and if you have JMicro driver installed, you’ll get something like this:

Select the old-good “Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller” to get rid of the JMicro ones.

The above fix should work on all MBs with JMicro controller, and, enjoy the trouble-free CD burning! Please let us know if it works for you.